About New Working Environments research

This is a speech by Bror Salmelin, held during the SEEM workshop in March 2003, giving background on the philosophy and objectives of New Working Environments.

Europe has three main pillars in its challenges. The single market, single currency and most recently the single European e-Economy - all these breaking the traditional boundaries.

The Lisbon goals are valid, more than ever, if we look at the timeline and also keep the enlargement in mind. Knowledge and competence is in the center.

Outline of the presentation	Outline of the speech
Drivers in the Knowledge economy - collaborative work - centerless organisation(s) - communities of practise Critical technologies enabling collaborative work spaces and new paradigms Content of the IST programme fostering SEEM and collaborative work, examples The next steps - Projects and other RTD actions - Policy concepts - ERA	I will speak about trends in the knowledge economy, some critical enablers for new behavioural patterns, and then reflecting to some content the IST Programme is offering for, again, entering proposals in the spirit of SEEM taking into account the new work paradigms, the collaboration structures, and you can also collaboration non-structures. And then some steps forward, also in practice.
The IST vision (IST@work) Bringing the users, "people" to the foreground ..... ..... to the center of our attention - building trustful technologies for the background - making technology "adapt" to people's needs Moving to an era where ..... "Our surrounding is the interface to IST applications & services" Exploring beyond "the PC, screens & keybord interfaces" ... Enabling multisensorial dialogues ..... - supported by computing & networking - 'everywhere', embedded in everyday objects Various roles of individuals in IS The ambient intelligence landscape - for all of us in different roles: As citizens: eGovernment As part of our organisations, both professional and leisure - work context, communities of practice, centerless organisation - cybercommunities, hobbies, other interest groups ?. controlled by the individual !	So again, reflecting to the very basic things of the IST programme, IST prority vision, from the work perspective, you could say IST@Work, what you can see there predominantly is to put the individual in the centre of the various kinds of actions. Individually-centric collaboration, individually-centric features enabling natural interaction, enabling natural linkage, to the web, to that ambient intelligence landscape into which we anchor ourselves in various roles of ours. We are moving again to an environment which is very strongly ambient intelligent, in all its dimensions, meaning that we have plentiful network connections, plentiful and various types of devices with natural interfaces - and that reality will be a reality soon. And of course this type of multidimensional, multi-equipment dialogue is very important, when we look really at the networking phenomenon itself. And here I think we should also put the networking phenomenon also into the perspective of the SEEM concept. We are speaking about us - all of us - linking to a networked society in various roles - as individuals, representing organisations, cyberorganisations, cybercommunities, both professionally and privately, and of course, we would like to do this in a natural way, without any additional effort. And that I think is important when we are setting the right ambition level of the work to be done. How do we interact in a natural way in our various roles, as part of work, as part of our other roles towards the networked society? And is this networked society actually the SEEM or not - that is one of the questions. Is it a critical enabler for making our lives easier?
AMI@Work ? Plentiful of network connections Plentiful of computing capacity Natural interfaces The challenge: How to develop new value creating work models and concepts which build upon the ambient intelligence landscape? How to break with the past, constructively?	Ambient Intelligence@Work It means we have plentiful and various networked connections, computing capacity, natural interfaces. I think the real challenge here is to see what will this future enable for us, and what kind of technologies need to be developed to really get the seamless integration for innovation. We need to have a simultaneous technical innovation, and also you could say a behavioural/organisational innovation. The innovation here, from the value creation perspective, coming from the individuals.
Trends: Shift to Intangibles Success factors foster location independent value creation in work Network Capabilities - internally - externally Innovation Skills Knowledge Management Trends in Products Increased computing and communications power products with embedded intelligence: - lifecycle management, intangible components within services with embedded intelligence: - enhanced relationship management, collaboration across disciplines intangible products: - digital content and embedded services Extended products and embedded services! Need for strongly lateral interconnections and competencies Increasingly more complex relationships needed Supporting service culture	When I see the knowledge economy from the value creation perspective, what we can clearly see are two trends. First of all, the shift to intangibles is clearly strengthening the fact that most of the success factors are being more and more related to intangible components. Networking capabilities, collaboration capabilities within organisations, among organisations, and actually, even forgetting these organisations, between individuals. Innovation, skills, and I repeat what Paul Timmers said today, we have a clear linkage to the New Innovation Policy, how to in a very lateral way bring together the necessary competencies for innovation. And of course knowledge management, in its widest possible sense, not only looking at the basic blocks of information, but also the cognitive layers in the same picture as well. When I look at the trends in products coming from the traditional core tangible components to extended products where we combine all the life cycle of a product, services, relationship management, to be short various types of different competencies over the whole life cycle, what we need is an environment where that can be easily done. Well at least can be done since for the moment we can see that it is rather difficult to link all the competencies needed into the same task ? well, the life cycle of a product or service. And this again stresses very much the need for entirely new behaviour of us as individuals, as contributors, but also I would say as part of our organisations, towards the common task which is to be shared.
New Collaboration Structures	Here I refer to the same picture as Paul Timmers also referred, because it has actually the same origin, from our common past. What is important is really to think again in the SEEM concept a lot more forward than just on networking infrastructures per se, to really capture the dynamics which is needed in putting the right competencies together in a very very much higher dynamic way than ever before - dynamic value constellations, dynamic competencies constellations, because again you do not necessarily know a priori which competencies are needed to perform a task, because the tasks are not necessarily so predetermined in the knowledge economy as they were before. Again, putting the SEEM into context, the real question is how to avoid the necessary friction when pulling these resources together. Can the SEEM vision help to put this frictionless collaboration space into place or not? And is your ambition level high enough to support this kind of frictionless collaboration across the organisations, well or even centreless organisation. If we put a time horizon of five years plus, and as Paul Timmers put in his presentation, the 2010 timeline. I am pretty sure that the SEEM with proper ambition can drive very much towards this. With proper ambition. Because value is created not respecting the organisational boundaries anymore.
Competence Nodes Networking M=Management response of a given task in a given time point is given to the competence node which understands the customers problem best	What is interesting about this picture is that it is a historical picture. It is 15 years old. It is one of the original pictures which were created at the moment of the IMS Intelligent Manufacturing Systems when that research programme was established, and in the context of virtual organisations. And I think that is really the ultimate approach to organisations still. And then when I really see the work relationships towards the SEEM, we can see that the competency clouds/subclouds are being created according to the task, and then in a certain operational phase where the configuration is being changed, it is being reconfigured - some of the competencies are being dropped out, some new ones are added in, and at the final end when the task has been done, everything is dissolved. Again, totally agnostic on the actual organisational structure. It is really a task-driven competence network. This picture actually illustrates the target. What I want to really stress here is that we have a plentiful of competencies all around us, which need to be brought together to perform a task, when the task is given to that cloud of competencies. It depends on the availability, it depends on the actual knowledge, on the actual competence. And this needs to be brought together under a leadership which is necessary to manage the subtask, to perform, to fulfil the task. What is important is to bring this into a dynamic model. When the task is evolving, we see different groupings of these competencies being needed, the collaboration structures being changed, the leadership structures, leadership roles being changed, and that is a highly complex problem of transforming groupings of competencies to shape them in other ways. And the question is how to create an environment which catalyses, enables this transformation, continuous you could say organic life of these subgroups along the life cycle of a task. What is important I think here is to recognise that essentially this kind of idea or model is totally organisation or boundary independent. It does not put any ideas, any emphasis on organisations, ideally it does not put any emphasis on [?.] Essentially the competencies being brought together, the collaboration structures being there, the information/knowledge transfer being there, and then fulfilling the task.
Technology enables changes in organisational forms Organisational forms motivates changes in technology The organisations are supporting the process, not creating value ?	When I look at the collaboration, you could say the eWork perspective more in detail, it's nothing new. It will be much more complex than ever before. It will be cutting across more disciplines than ever, it will be more dynamic than ever, and it will be in interaction and collaboration much more media rich and multimodal than ever before. And it will be natural. When we put this into the research context we can clearly see that there is plenty of room to push for the technical vision of the SEEM in the Framework Programme. I will not refer to this picture more, some of you have seen it, it is also in the previous reports on the SEEM workshops we have had.
Value is created in whatever way is appropriate, no longer dictated by organisational relations and boundaries How to avoid friction in the dynamics needed?
Critical aspects of future collaboration cutting across many technology areas more dynamic than ever competencies and availability media-rich and multimodal environments infrastructure of networks and services, utility model natural interaction supporting creativity
Technical vision for AMI@work/SEEM	I personally see the SEEM concept being very critical in reducing all the unnecessary friction between the kinds of transformations of competencies following the task descriptions. The further we can go to this, the better we can perform, and the less we have friction in the overall performance. Well you can say that an organisation is just friction, they have nothing to do with the value creation, the organisations enable value creation for sure, and create a certain security, but from the value creation perspective, well, what's their role?
Technologies enabling the AMI@Work vision SEEM concept as such: interoperability, commonly agreed processes, standardization KM and semantic web Grid-type of information infrastructure (utility) p2p resources management process context-sensitive technologies (mobility, location, user identification etc) trust and security technologies	Ambient Intelligence@Work is clearly very much also building on the SEEM concept as such. Referring again to the issues we heard today - interoperability, common agreed processes, standardisation, technologies like knowledge management, semantic web. Grid is a very good example of critical enabling technologies if you want to create very flexible collaboration infrastructures for value creation. P2P of course, because again that is, actually, well you could say, the ultimate granularity of networked infrastructures and networked behaviour we would like to achieve. Resources management, how to ensure resources and competencies' availability at a certain point to give a wanted result. etc. etc.
Examples of Strategic Objectives supporting the SEEM and AMI@work Networked business and governments Applications and services for the mobile user and worker GRID-based systems for complex problem solving Embedded systems Mobile and wireless systems beyond 3G Joint call with Priority 3: Service and product engineering in 2010	Then I'll touch shortly on some of the strategic objectives which are open under the IST Priority supporting the SEEM concept and the Ambient Intelligence@Work simultaneously. There are plenty of opportunities for you !
The New Work Environments: Mission The unit ?New working environments? manages effectively and professionally high level IST RTD and contributes to policy developments in new working environments designs and organisation of work in the networked knowledge-based economy, incorporating innovative ICT; to facilitate creativity and collaboration, to resource-use efficiency, value-creation and extended work opportunities for all in various settings. 36 staff members, strong technical research focus Strong heritage from FP5, new approach to collaboration New Work Environments: Technology Focus The unit focuses on the areas of eProfessions and individually driven working, new work space designs, knowledge management in information dense and integrated, often media-rich working environments, including mobility and multimodality, collaborative work and organisations, ambient organisations, communities of practise and new organisation of work.	A couple of words, let's say, a commercial, on the New Working Environments unit, which is a new unit established for the 6th Framework Programme. The mission statement is presented here. What I have here again highlighted is that we are rather strongly focussing in new working environments, and the processes related to collaborative work. Not only the traditional engineering environments but really looking the value creation interaction processes, individuals taking part in the work environment as part of our organisations, or as individuals. Again, a very very broad scope, and you should definitely not only think about CSCW and telework, or whatever, it's something in the past. It is really the collaboration processes which is there. Our focus is also rather strongly technological. We are looking to the individually-driven working paradigm, knowledge management, media rich environments, mobility, multi-modality, you can see that really we would like to see research emerging on those kind of modalities which are essential for the networked society in work. We do think there will be a major break from the past drivers in working communities, towards something new which is enabled by the grid infrastructures, by the networked structures, which we are not yet systematically exploiting. We can see emergent business communities, we can see emergent work communities, we can see emergent centreless communities, organisations to which we participate. But we can also see the transformation of the existing ones towards a more collaborative nature. And this collaboration is certainly something which we would like to stress very much for the future.